


the mountains we must climb

by melforbes



Series: witch bedelia [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24382168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: When an invader threatens their territory and livelihood, they must defend the life they've built together, or face drastic consequences.
Relationships: Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter
Series: witch bedelia [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1105437
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> though this is normally posted in a serial or episodic way, this one has gotten away from me, so it'll be posted as three chapters instead. updates should come relatively soon

At the end of September, she can tell that there’s going to be a frost tonight even though the weatherman on the radio seems to disagree, so they spend Mabon going over the last of the raspberry bushes and tomato plants, bringing inside whatever they can and jarring whatever won’t fit in the refrigerator. Now, the garden is mostly empty, turning down for the season, smaller herb plants she wishes to save moving indoors and all of her other plots resting for the oncoming season. 

“Is it more than merely an Equinox?” he asks as he plates her dinner, rare and buttery rosemary steak, sage potatoes, baked apples, a little bowl of pomegranate seeds on the side. His fingers are stained red from pulling the fruit apart.

“In a way, yes,” she says, crossing her legs, her deep red wrap dress gaping and making part of her pale leg peek out. 

He sets the plate down in front of her, then asks, “How so?”

Though he ought to be involved in her practices, he struggles with her rituals because she works through them effortlessly and leaves no room for elaboration or teaching. He feels the same about drawing: if she were to ask him for a lesson, he wouldn’t be able to explain how or why he shades in a certain way, for he’s shaded that way for decades now and has forgotten the original relevance. She’ll mention the goddess Rhiannon to him as if he’s known the goddess as long as Bedelia herself has, and now, he's afraid to ask who she is. When Bedelia mentioned Mabon last night, he furrowed his brow, unsure of exactly what that was.

But it’s a kind of new year, or at least a winding-down before the new year. They’re to complete every last bit of business, and so far, they have, be it through finishing off their season at the outdoor market or harvesting the very last of their crop before the frost comes. Right now, she has no outstanding orders, no bottles or jars left from last year’s harvest, no lingering things on her ever-so-long to-do list. When he asks her what she would like to do in order to celebrate some more, she smiles serenely to herself and says, _I’d like to take a bath._

And there’s something so intense but so soft about watching her eat what he’s cooked. For so many years, he traveled from place to place without ever really living in those places, no friends to be had and no activities to engage in. At best, he would carry a sketchbook with him, but any kind of luggage was a detriment to his lifestyle, anything that weighed down his one small suitcase becoming a burden, so now, his old sketchbooks are littered throughout libraries in this country, all abandoned, all forgotten. But here, he has a desk in her office - though he works there too, it will always be her office - where he sits down to draw while she works, and when he’s finished with a portrait, he has the choice to sell it, hang it, or simply file it away. Now, he can stay in one place long enough to keep more than one book of sketches. Now, he has someone to cook for every day, and he can sear steak for her, stir rosemary through browned butter, peel apart a pomegranate and feed her the seeds. He’s gained more than just a home here; he’s gained a life, something he hasn’t had for longer than he can remember, something he didn’t realize he was so desperately craving until he found himself sitting across from her each night as she ate, his toes curling whenever she thanked him for cooking and told him that the meal was delicious. He hadn’t expected to feel safe and comforted when he woke up each morning and saw her sleeping alongside him, curled up against her pillow, one strap of her nightgown falling off of her pale shoulder. He hadn't realized that loving her would involve all of his senses, all of his being.

This is the holiday of unfinished business, and he certainly has something he needs to do before they wind down for the rest of the year, ease into autumn and winter and curl up together for the cooler months. Weeks ago, he planned a weekend in Boston for the two of them, but the late summer season was - ironically - awash with weddings at the grander hotels, and when one of the cats had a medical emergency a few days before they meant to leave for the city - though Bedelia rarely spoke on the phone and even more rarely let her emotions overtake her while speaking to another person, she was near tears while she spoke to the veterinarian on the phone - he knew that that weekend wasn’t the right one. As time passed in the following weeks, he never found the right opportunity, for if they weren’t selling at the very last of the Saturday markets, then they were harvesting, canning, preserving, driving to opposite ends of town in search of more supplies, creating longer and longer lists of things to purchase so that they could finish off the summer season well. And after all of their dashing around, she would watch him salivate at roadkill and close her eyes in discomfort because once again they’d both forgotten to meet their own needs. 

“It’s good to slow down,” she tells him as he fills a wine glass for her, sets it down alongside her plate. “Every year, I need the reminder that this is the end of the season. That I have a choice in the way I live my life.”

“And what choices have you made this year?”

She looks up at him, a Kubrick stare, slight smirk on her lips.

“What choices have _you_ made?”

And he wants to go ahead right now, but if he does, he doubts she’ll be interested in eating afterward, and she needs to eat. 

“I’ve made ones with which I am content,” he says and sits down across from her, leaves it at that.

On the porch, they’ve lined up gourds and little pumpkins, the start of autumn peeking through. There are candles lit along the windowsill, white and spice-scented, and sometimes, they’ll let the sun set without turning any lights on and instead be cast in candlelight, relishing in the earlier darkness, relaxing into the colder seasons. Though she did so prematurely, back when the days were still too hot for such things, she’s already moved her summer clothes out of her closet, bringing in her long-sleeved dresses and sweaters though her heavier cloaks are still in storage. Only when he looks at the hanging pictures of them together on their wall does he realize just how long her hair has grown since he first met her. Soon enough, it will have been a year since he first saw her, and then a year since she first welcomed him into her home, and then a year since it became their home together. 

“This is a holiday of gratitude as well,” she says over dinner. “A time to reflect on the good of this year, to remember the most beautiful parts.”

And he can think of so many that he’s almost speechless, from seeing ballets and operas in Boston to standing on the widow’s walk with her while snow falls over the graveyard beyond their home to lazing on the couch with her on Sunday mornings, reading together while she drinks tea he brewed for her. It’s hard to pick just one moment to speak about, for no one moment feels more or less important than any other. Instead, it’s the whole year he’s thankful for despite the times of pain, the past that haunts him, the strange looks they both receive whenever they’re in town. With her, the hardest parts of life are a bit easier, and the sweet ones infinitely sweeter. Even if this year had been the hardest of his life, he doubts he would characterize it that way, not when he can remember going to a screening of _To Have and Have Not_ at the local theater with her and feeling her reach for his hand and then letting her lean her head against his shoulder. It couldn’t possibly be a bad year if he spent that year with her. 

“I’m grateful that you decided to stay,” she says, and her cheeks are the slightest shade redder, and she’s looking down, hiding her face. 

And then, he doesn’t care about her dinner anymore. Let it all go to waste; he doesn’t care in the least, and he reaches into the pocket of his pants, and he’s on one knee before her, pulling the ring box open. Months ago, he planned a speech, but he can’t remember a single line of it now, won’t be able to speak regardless of whether or not he remembers it, and when she looks down at him, she’s surprised, genuinely surprised. He hadn’t thought he would take her by surprise. Certainly, he wouldn’t have surprised her had they gone to Boston as planned, but this is just another shared dinner, another part of their normal days together. No grand choirs, no fanfares, no fancy hotel rooms, no room service chocolate-covered strawberries. Suddenly, he’s self-conscious, for maybe this was a horribly impulsive decision.

“I want to stay much longer,” he manages, “if you would like me to.”

He started looking for rings in March but only found this one in August after he pored through every jewelry store he could reasonably reach without her noticing his absence, and only once he made his way to New York, to some of the finest jewelers in the country, was he able to find the proper setting for her, a floral halo ring with a gold band, the art deco style a wonderful combination of classical and modern, the setting almost basic from afar but joyful and illuminated up close. When he purchased a set of gold bands while commissioning the ring, the jeweler smugly asked him if he was being too confident, but he knew that he wasn’t. When he picked the ring up, saw its lustrous shine in the bright lighting at the jeweler’s, he almost abandoned his Boston plans altogether, thinking that he would ask her when he returned home that evening, but he forced himself to hold off instead, spent the whole night anxious and almost unable to contain himself.

And now, she stares down almost blankly, and she’s so beautiful, so captivating and so beautiful, and he means it. He means forever. He’s meant forever all along.

She reaches her left hand out toward him, looking down at her own fingers, and he takes her hint and pulls the ring from the box, slipping it over her fourth finger, and he rubs his thumbs over her knuckles, and the ring looks so right on her, exactly how he pictured it would look. Leaning forward, he kisses the back of her hand, and she brings her other hand to his chin, tilting his head up so that he can look at her. 

When she leans down and kisses him so gently, he knows her answer.

* * *

In October, she’s roughly chopping herbs for a special-ordered elixir while the radio plays when they both hear the news. She pulls together the herbs with both of her hands, then tosses them into a boiling pot while he turns the radio’s volume up.

It must be recent, for it wasn’t in the paper this morning: a killing in the nearby mountain range has been connected to two more local killings, three bow-hunters dead right at the beginning of their season. However, their injuries aren’t the ones most would expect, misfired arrows piercing the heart, backwoods medicine gone wrong; no, these men were found with long, wretched cuts all over their bodies, as well as blunt force trauma to their heads. 

“Could they have fallen?” she asks as she stirs her concoction with a wooden spoon. “Fallen and hit their heads?”

Though she’s wearing a wool sweater over her long dress, she insists on keeping the windows open to let fresh air in; the candles on the sills flicker with the breezes, the cats settling into sunlit spots throughout the house. He has a loaf of rosemary bread, her favorite, baking in the oven. As she always is, she’s wearing the ring. For now, they’re planning to wed in a courthouse in Boston on November 1st, but it takes time to fabricate an identity for him, even more time to make it seem legitimate enough. Though he can sense the air changing, he feels momentarily as if they’re safe.

“They could have,” he says - or, rather, lies - as he listens to the broadcast.

The police will not be disclosing further details, but any strange occurrences should be reported to the given tip line, as well as any knowledge pertaining to these three specific crimes. And now, the weather.

“I can feel you thinking,” she says as she leans against the kitchen counter, her cook timer turning itself without requiring her to wind it, her spoon still swirling through the elixir though she’s no longer stirring. Of course, he doesn’t know if she means this literally or figuratively, but he knows nonetheless that he can’t act as if he’s not concerned.

“It’s dramatic,” he concedes as he sits down at the kitchen table, “but it could be anything.”

“Or anyone,” she adds.

“It doesn’t seem like your kind.”

“No, absolutely not,” she brushes off. “Too brash.”

“But if it were mine, I doubt they would leave behind so much blood.”

Furrowing her brow, she says, “The broadcast never mentioned blood.”

“What do you mean?”

“There wasn’t anything in the paper, was there?” 

“I didn’t see anything, no.”

“Injuries like those,” she says, coming over to sit down beside him, “they would’ve bled, and heavily. Long scratches, those would’ve bled significantly, maybe even bled someone out if they were particularly deep.”

“So?”

“The broadcast never said anything about blood.”

“So you assume they didn’t find any.”

“That’s an identifying factor in a crime,” she says. “Something the police would want to hold back in order to prevent copycats.”

He raises his eyebrows, a little smirk on his lips, and she rolls her eyes, says, “I did an internship in a mortuary when I was seventeen. Don’t make fun.”

“I promise I won’t.” Actually, he doesn’t.

“It’s a bit of a reach. I could be wrong,” she says without meaning it. “I’ll ask friends if they know anything.”

And when she calls other nearby witches, they seem to have the same questions, as well as the same assumption: this was a supernatural crime, not a human one. Though humans could be ugly and futile, bizarre and disgusting, they weren’t so routinely bad, and they tended to think through killings more than other creatures did, so the strange markings of death couldn’t possibly be human-inflicted. No, this was a crime of one of their kinds, and while the police bumble through an investigation, they all know that they have a responsibility toward hushing these deaths away, making the case go cold, turning the killings into the subject of a low-budget conspiracy documentary and nothing else. However, the means for pushing these events under the rug are much less obvious than the need for those means themselves.

“We could track this...being,” she says a few mornings later as she dresses for the day. “You and I could go into the mountains and pitch a camp. We could try to reach an agreement with them.”

Of course, she tries not to make assumptions, but yesterday’s paper detailed more about the strange bodily presentations, how the scratches were made before the heads were crushed, how such wounds were more for torture than anything else given that the following blow was the one that killed. Though she mentioned werewolves yesterday, said that claws could make long scratches and that retaliation from a bow-hunter could prove deadly and thus require a fatal blow in response, the phase of the moon wasn’t quite right for that, they both were sure of it. No, this isn’t a werewolf or a daemon, certainly not a witch, and even if they were to explore every other possibility, it’s growing more and more clear that someone willing to make a bloody mess of a body is someone whose interest lies primarily in the blood itself.

“I doubt we’ll reach an agreement,” he dismisses, but though he means the statement, he denies her for other reasons, much more selfish ones. When they go out to see screenings of her favorite old movies, those films show black-and-white film love as something mesmerizing and effortless, beautiful in every way imaginable, tireless and true, but to him love is a certain kind of calculated agony. He loves her, and because he loves her, he finds his thoughts racing in the small hours of the morning nowadays, wondering if a knock on their door the next day will be a vampire coming to remind him that he shouldn’t mingle with other kinds. So far, the local witches have been so accepting of them, so willing to bless their union, but he knows that others would be quicker to judge. Though loving her is home, his most comfortable place, the most important part of his life, loving her hurts because he has a reason to keep himself safe. Loving her hurts because he has to think critically about his every move when dealing with a homicidal - he sees the irony in the use of the term - vampire in their area, for he’ll never forgive himself if he puts her in harm’s way.

So for now, they wait. With every new client coming into their home, he stares them down and asks them small talk questions that would jostle a vampire. They now have a mirror in the main room downstairs; he has to be careful where he stands while humans come in for special orders. Now, he has a social security number, or rather has stolen one from a dead child who would now be in his seventies, and they’ve sought out a marriage license. _We’re safe,_ he tries to convince them both as they retire to bed for the night, the radios forced off and the newspapers shredded as packing material. _We’re going to stay safe._

* * *

The fourth body drops midway through October, and this time, it makes the front page of the paper.

“They’re bringing in the F.B.I.,” she says as she sits at the kitchen table, as he sets down a plate of brioche French toast in front of her. When he’s anxious, when he’s uncomfortable, his first instinct is to treat her to something warm and sugary, an artful smear of her homemade raspberry jam on the side of the plate, the thick slices of toast dusted with cinnamon and powdered sugar. “They’re patrolling many of the hunting trails.”

“Has any other information been released?” he asks, setting down a fork and a knife alongside her plate, then joining her at the table.

Nowadays, the cats line the windowsills, particularly those above their heaters, and stare straight out the windows, their gazes unflinching, their tails flicking back and forth. Every so often, Morgana will prowl from one end of the house to the other, keeping watch over the family. Bedelia has had to put her candles up on high shelves because the cats keep knocking them over.

She pushes her reading glasses up on her nose, then says, “It doesn’t appear so.”

“Have any of the victims’ names been released?”

“Not yet,” she says, “but I think they may have trouble identifying the victims.”

“Why would that be?”

“Their heads were crushed.”

“And?”

She sets aside the newspaper, asks, “How did you kill, back when you killed for fun?”

Smirking, he asks, “Do you really believe it’s no longer fun?”

She huffs, clarifies, “How did you kill when you didn’t care if others knew what you were?”

“I was never elaborate.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I’ve always preferred the neck.”

“What was your most drastic kill, then?”

Even in marriage, he’s unsure he can tell her about the most drastic one, but he had patterns before, certain tendencies.

“I focused more on men than women,” he says, then doesn’t explain why. “I liked to pose the bodies. If they were posed in a strange way, the authorities would spend time thinking about why when, in reality, I had merely wondered what was possible.”

“And what kinds of poses?”

“One was hanging on a tree swing in a forest, hands tied to the chains,” he says. “Another held a candle that dripped wax all over his chest while he lay in bed.”

“Did you ever kill more than one at a time?”

“Once, when I was trying to blend in among humans, I tried killing a couple, consuming one and then siphoning the other’s blood into a vessel to carry with me.”

“And?”

He smiles. “It tasted stale in the end. I had no desire to repeat such a thing.”

“But you were never overly violent with the bodies.”

“Not in life. Not until after death.”

“Not like this killer.”

“No, not like this killer.”

She picks up her knife and fork, then sinks them into her breakfast.

“We could call a meeting of some kind,” he says, hands folded on the table. “Open up a line of inquiry on neutral territory.”

“And where would we do that?”

She huffs because she doesn’t know the answer, and because he knows that she doesn’t know the answer but asks anyway. At her feet, two of the cats, Morgana and Nuala, one pure black and the other pure white, circle and nudge at her legs, bunching up the material of her dress. 

“There are other witches in this part of the country,” she says in between bites. “Werewolves too. We could all come together. A tribunal of sorts.”

“But how would that stop these killings?”

“If we claim the land, then maybe the killer will migrate elsewhere.”

“A land shared by witches and wolves?”

And she puts down her fork and knife, and her breaths are so much shallower than usual, it’s strange all the things he notices. He can feel her anxiety as if it’s his own.

“My kind don’t condone unions like ours,” she says, measuring her words, trying to act impartial. “We’re deviants to them. They think we’re powerless to our desires and look down upon us as a result.”

Standing up, she brings her palms to the skirt of her dress, irons out the wrinkles, forces the cats to follow her as she paces, first to the stove and then to the refrigerator, then opens the fridge in search of the cold carafe filled with water. She pours herself a glass. Though he won’t stand up, won’t follow her, he wishes he could massage her shoulders, console her.

“And now, one of your kind is killing in a way that could expose us all,” she says, then takes a sip from her glass, ice cold. “The other witches will see us as a threat to them too. We need to be careful.”

When she looks to him, he sees how conflicted she feels, the commitment to her kind and her commitment to him, these horrible deaths and the greater meaning they hold for all supernatural beings. Though she looks at him with such wide eyes, warm eyes, and wants to be consoled, another part of her longs for him to stay back so that she can navigate this alone, her life no longer tied to these killings in some way. She wants him to hold her but fears the complications he brings.

Though he can’t remedy the complications, he can hold her, so he joins her, reaches out for her, and she sets her glass down on the kitchen counter and comes to him so easily, softening in his arms, and holding her like this, her chest against his, her forehead warm against his neck, he feels for a fleeting moment that they are safe here together.

“I’m scared,” she admits, and her breakfast is left barely eaten on the table, and he wants to take her upstairs and tuck her into bed, tell her that they’ll deal with this tomorrow, that everything will be better in the morning, but in the morning, they’ll likely hear about more killings, and the threat will come even closer to their home. No matter how much he wants to, he can’t avoid the reality that they are under attack right now even if that attack is in the distant mountains, not in their home.

He kisses the top of her head and rubs her back, and the cats are taking a keen interest in her breakfast, and he ought to make her eat something. He ought to make her finish the plate. If she’s scared, the best he can do for her other from remedy her fears is keep her healthy.

“We can call the other witches after breakfast,” he says, a last-ditch attempt at a solution. “We can call a meeting to determine what to do. We can’t solve this alone.”

Nodding against him, she sighs, trying to find relief in the prospect. 

“This is a threat to us all,” he says, then pushes a lock of her hair away from her face. “We’ll stop this together, not alone.”

And in the end, she doesn’t finish her breakfast but at least eats half, and the cats are all too interested in the scraps, and the air is turning colder, not cold but colder, and the season is new. He should take her outside for a walk, but she’s busy making calls, asking every witch in the area if their home is big enough to hold forty people, if a potluck or a big dinner would be a better idea. As she leans the phone - her least favorite thing in the whole house - against her shoulder, she writes down notes in a notebook, plans regarding covens and clans, witches and wolves and daemons alike. An hour’s drive away, one of Bedelia’s friends from another coven has a barn that could comfortably fit a large group; if everyone brings some kind of dish to share, then there should be enough food to go around. This Friday, they’ll meet at seven, right as the sun starts to set. _Luckily,_ she tells him, _the moon is waning, so the wolves won’t cause a fuss._

Of course, he’s the one in their household who needs to cook. Though he’ll be the only being at the meeting who doesn’t consume such things, he’ll still have to cook. In between phone calls, she mentions offhandedly that his lasagna is lovely, they have so much fresh oregano, maybe they can make homemade cheese. After all, they have so many jars of tomatoes taking up space in the basement. They ought to cook them up sometime.

By four in the afternoon, she’s done nothing pertaining to her business and everything pertaining to their current crisis, and he pulls her away from the phone, opens up the coat-closet, takes out one of her shawls and hands it to her.

“We’re going for a walk,” he says as he finds his coat among all of her cloaks, dresses for the weather. “We need some fresh air.”

And she holds his hand as they walk between the headstones in the graveyard across from their home, arms raising to pass over the tops of graves, and the little maple trees here have shed most of their leaves, only sparse yellow ones left on the branches. Tonight, he’ll make her soup and focaccia for dinner, and she’ll put an old, thick wool sweater over her dress so that she’ll stay warm, and maybe, if the weather grows cool enough, they’ll put logs into the fire, curl up in the main room together, and read. Regardless of where the night takes them, they’re going to stay away from the phone, for there are enough plans for now; anything else can be spoken about tomorrow. 

“We’ll travel there after my work hours on Friday,” she says as they walk; though she’s fine without a cloak, she pinned her shawl in place and put on her mittens. “There should be around thirty or forty attendees in total. By the end of the night, we should have some idea of what we can do to stop these killings.”

He nods in understanding, and though he has questions, he’s not sure he should pose them, at least not yet. What good, he wonders, could witches, druids, and wolves do to combat an unseen force? How could so many beings irrelevant to the problem create any kind of change? But maybe the others know something Bedelia and Hannibal do not, so he keeps his thoughts to himself. The answers will come if he gives them time. 

“Have you ever thought about having children?”

The question blindsides him to the point that he wonders if he only dreamt it, if she even spoke at all, but when he looks at her, he can see quiet sincerity in her eyes, the sadness of vulnerability. Has the question been weighing on her? She looks sleepless about this, as if it’s occupied her mind far past being welcome.

“No,” he says honestly, not knowing what else he could say.

Though it’s the truth, the truth feels lame and inconsequential. No, he hasn’t thought about having children, for there was never a reason - until now, he realizes - for him to think about such a thing.

“It’s been on my mind,” she says, and their joined hands lift over top of another gravestone. In this part of the cemetery, the graves are lichen-eaten and fading, a hundred years old and long-forgotten. 

“Do you want children?” he asks.

They have enough room. Though their income might be a bit too low for comfort, he thinks she could find a way to overcome such a thing, whether their triumph comes from her joining a naturopathic doctor’s practice or from them both putting more time and effort into their summer sales, maybe expanding their garden or partnering with the local orchards in order to stock pies for the autumn tourist season. And she can sew and knit - though oftentimes the knitting needles float far away from her and act of their own volition, the sewing machine starting and stopping while she’s minding something in another room - so maybe they have ample opportunity to make money. Upstairs, she stores brews, blends, and estate sale furniture in a spare room, and a big one at that, large enough to comfortably fit two beds. He could easily cook for two. He rests for far less of the night than she does, three or four hours at most, and though his needs are more drastic and effort-filled than her own, his needs only require one day a week of effort while hers require three meals a day and eight hours of rest. All things considered, there’s little holding them back. 

“I haven’t the slightest idea if it’s possible,” she says, and though she speaks offhandedly, he can tell that she’s leafed through every book she owns on similar subjects, that she’s tried to find an answer to a question she already knows is impossible to answer. “There’s no use wanting what you’ll never have.”

“But do you _want_ children?” he asks, but he knows she won’t answer. 

When he met her, his life bloomed. Now, he has a home, a family of sorts, prospects for the next many years of his life, a partner he loves and a life he can actively take part in. As they cooked down and canned the last of the tomatoes from the garden, he watched as she sterilized jars and thought about how they would do the same with raspberries and peaches come summer, how they would buy fresh butter from the summertime market and use that butter to bake pies to sell, how in the spring they would harvest the first plants from her garden and come fall harvest the last. And though their lives were repetitive - plenty of days were spent repeating the same tireless actions of the day beforehand, trying to ensure they had enough food for winter, trying not to let anything go to waste, trying to keep their income steady - he found excitement in that repetition, a kind of joy in how a whole day spent boiling down tomatoes meant that he could bake lasagna for her in the fall and winter, how jarred strawberry jam meant a sweet, summery delight come winter. Before he met her, he was a wanderer, a horror in every town he passed through, someone with no attachments to others, and now, he has a life, a full life, a life he shares with her. Suddenly, so much possibility has come into his life, for now, he has a place to receive mail, a bed to rest in each night, a lover to cook for, a life to live, and though that possibility is almost always beautiful, that possibility sometimes haunts him too.

Before he met her, he never thought about having children, for he knew that such a thing would likely never be possible, but now, living with her is bringing about the possibility of having children, and he doesn’t know what to say. He’s truly never thought about it before. Though he feels instinctive pulls in every direction, he doesn’t know which one represents his true feelings. And she’s right; they might not be able to have children at all, either because of their combined infertility or their inability to adopt as two people with misleading or false identification. The question of whether or not he wants children might not even be a question worth asking. 

“Let’s stop for a moment,” she says as they reach one edge of the cemetery, a copse of trees nearby, one big oak shading the rest and making waves with its many roots. Leading him there, she sits down and leans back against the tree’s trunk, looks out at the graveyard beyond.

When he sits down alongside her, he can see their home in the distance, far away but not too far, and the wind is rustling the leaves that are still on these trees, all red and orange, the beautiful changes of this season. She leans against him; he takes both of her hands in his own, smooths his thumbs over the wool of her mittens. Though he typically hates overcast days - it had taken him decades to be able to withstand the sun again, and now that his skin has toughened, he never wants to stay in the dark again - this one feels welcome, for she will grow cold in a few minutes and ask to head home, and there, he will bring her a sweater, tend to their first fire of the season, pull a blanket over her as she curls up on the couch in the main room, find her book and bring it to her there. He wants the cold. He wants for them to stay inside and push away everything on the radio, in the papers, out on the mountain ranges. He wants his home to stay safe.

And she kisses him, a halfway kiss just at the corner of his lips, and then, their foreheads are together, and it feels sacred to be scared with a lover. It feels sacred to take her on a walk for some fresh air and feel her relax as they sit beneath a tree together, the wind sweeping through the long grass of the cemetery, their house looming in the distance. Though he’s not sure what the future will hold, he has blind faith that everything will be okay because he can’t imagine a world that isn’t like the one they bloomed together, one in which her warm body is against him and her hands grasp his own. They’re going to be okay because they need to be.

“I’m feeling a little cold,” she says, and he can’t tell if minutes or hours have passed. “We should head home.”

She helps him up, then holds his hand all the way back.

* * *

After peeling and chopping enough apples for two big trays of crisp, he swears he’ll never let her talk him into bringing dessert again.

At first, he needed make a lasagna and nothing else. If he so desired, he could bake bread as well, but all she was asking him to provide for the meeting on Friday was a lasagna. Then, Marigold, a witch from two towns over and someone whose name now made him angry each time he heard it, called Bedelia and insisted that someone needed to bring dessert, could she be a doll and do just that? And with four orders scheduled for pickup on Friday, plus two afternoon acupuncture appointments in town, Bedelia couldn’t find the time, so Hannibal was tasked with baking three trays of apple crisp - three entire trays, he’d had to ask her if she really meant three - before the end of the work-week. On Thursday, they ventured to the nearby orchard together, picking five bushels and hoping that would be enough, and while the lasagna rests in the fridge, he looks down at his pile of peels, the many, _many_ apple pieces ready to be made into dessert, and swears he’ll never do this again.

But he does it this one time, grinding the cinnamon with a microplane, portioning out oats and brown sugar, arranging the racks in the oven so that he can fit all three trays inside at once. And then, he turns the kitchen timer and sighs in exhausted triumph, and the front door opens as she returns from her appointments, and after she sheds her cloak and boots, she comes into the kitchen and smiles.

“Something smells wonderful,” she says, and then, she sees the little red cocotte on the stove, warm and steaming, a miniature crisp made just for her using the scraps that wouldn’t fit in the trays. Before he put the three trays into the oven, he stuck the little cocotte in, just for her. 

“I made you a treat,” he says though he doesn’t need to, and she’s laughing as she comes to him, her palms at his sides, kissing him and feeling a kind of joy he used to think would never be near him again. 

Sometimes, she’ll crochet trivets when they either can’t find or burn through some of their own, and the one he sets down on the kitchen table is fraying at the edges, burn-marks at the center of its sunflower design, and he loves these little cocottes, loves their perfect little portions and the way she’s contrasted as she sits behind a red dish. He brings her a dessert spoon, then tells her _wait, wait_ as he reaches into the icebox for a pint of locally made vanilla gelato, so flavorful that he can see so many flecks of vanilla in the cream as he scoops some on top of her dessert.

“I love you,” she says, eyes bright, then digs in.

Before they leave for the evening, while he’s wrapping up trays of lasagna and apple crisp, she changes out of her work-clothes and into something more casual. Because she was one of the witches to call this meeting, she’ll be forced to lead, and he knows she doesn’t like to look stuffy in front of others, that the dresses she wears for cooking and acupuncture sessions are ones with patches on the elbows and stains on the hips. When she comes back downstairs, the trays wrapped in foil and his coat already on, she’s wearing a dress he’s never seen before, balloon-sleeved and burgundy, the high waist and v-neck so flattering on her, and she takes her boots from by the door, starts to lace them up while he stares.

“Aren’t you going to bring those out to the car?” she says with a smirk, knowing why he’s staring.

“You look beautiful,” he says, as if he actually needs to say something so obvious. 

She took her hair out of its braid, so now, there are little creases in her long, blonde locks, and she deftly ties her boots, pulling the laces tight, fingers lithe and long, knuckles bare. Though he knows he ought to take the food out to the car, he pauses for a moment, trying to figure out why something seems quietly off about her.

“You’re not wearing it,” he says once he realizes, and it’s not an accusation, not something meant to hurt her.

While she changed, she took off the ring. If he were to go into their bedroom, he would find the ring in the box where she keeps all of her jewelry, right where it ought to stay whenever she takes it off. But since he gave her the ring, he’s drawn her baths while she kept it on, cooked with her while she wore it. The only times she takes it off are messy ones, such as when they’re working outside. Though tonight might be tumultuous, he hadn’t expected the clashes to be so great that she couldn’t wear her ring to this meeting.

She pauses for a moment, then continues to tie her boots, trying not to look at him.

“I’m sorry,” she says but won’t elaborate.

He can feel her discomfort, and he understands.

* * *

Though the drive out to the farm is long, the setting sun and the light it casts on the changing leaves makes it feel far shorter, public radio broadcasting classical music as they drive, and she’s stretching her legs in the passenger’s seat, so much food tied down in the trunk. He wishes they were driving somewhere else, somewhere better, but when he pulls down the dirt driveway toward the farm, when he sees a number of other cars parked on the field in front of the farmhouse, he thinks that maybe things will be okay tonight. If wolves, druids, witches, and daemons were coming together to fight for the common good, then maybe the marriage of a witch to a vampire wouldn’t be seen as deviant. And as they carry trays of food over to the big, empty barn, outside of which is an old-fashioned brick oven next to folding tables filled with potluck dishes, he sees a strange assortment of beings, some of the witches recognizable to him. The age of each attendee ranges from maybe four to 104, and he watches as wolves, still in their human form, easily uncap beer bottles and toast together. He has a hard time believing that any of these people could wish ill upon Bedelia’s and his home.

And there’s Marigold, he can finally put a name to a face, and she’s red-haired and obnoxious, saying everything with a passive-aggressive tone, _oh, I assumed you would bring three trays of lasagna too, given the apple crisp._ Smiling along with whatever Marigold says, Bedelia apologizes, busy week, sometimes things just slip through the cracks, and by the time they’re away from the other witch, Bedelia’s rolling her eyes.

“I wish this would end already,” she says, and he watches as someone - a wolf, maybe, or a daemon - slips his tray of lasagna into the oven, heating it up. 

Because the sun hasn’t entirely set, there’s enough light while all of the attendees fill mismatched ceramic plates with food, and once everyone is settled into the barn, benches set out so that the attendees can face Bedelia, Marigold, and two men Hannibal assumes are wolves or daemons, he sits alongside a group of witches, chaste distance, an awkward but welcoming smile on his lips. 

“Aren’t you hungry?” one of the witches asks, and it _is_ conspicuous, how everyone but him has a plate on their lap. He winces, wondering if he should have wasted food and pretended even though there’s no use in trying to trick anyone here.

“Saving myself for dessert,” he says, trying to sound jovial. “Baked far too much apple crisp.” He holds out his hand to shake theirs. “I’m Ms. du Maurier’s partner.”

Uncomfortably, the witches each shake his hand, and he can tell from their looks that they’re trying to debunk that word, _partner._ And now, they’re thinking about what coven he must be a part of, assuming that he’s her romantic partner, and he doesn’t look like any of the men they know, does he? No, this is a new face, and unless Bedelia met him somewhere far away, he isn’t one of her kind at all.

He’s thankful when the attention shifts to the front of the room, Bedelia, Marigold, and the two men detailing what they know about the F.B.I.’s investigation, the four bodies so far, the circumstances surrounding the deaths. In the end, Bedelia’s blood hypothesis is correct; thanks to Benny, the nineteen-year-old werewolf studying computer science at the state university, they have a few crime scene photographs, and as expected, the bodies are suspiciously pale, exsanguinated in a way he recognizes, even the long, nonfatal gashes sucked dry. When Marigold calls for any doubt of the species of the killer, no one raises a hand to offer another possibility, and unfortunately, the witches sitting near him glance at him and then at their laps. They know. Though he thinks Bedelia may have mentioned who he was to the rest of the assembly, he’s not sure how much everyone else knows, and with the way the witches keep looking at him, he thinks he shouldn’t tell.

Based on the positions of the found bodies, the assembly has managed a guess of the vampire’s location, somewhere up in the mountains, likely hiding out in a shelter or cabin and scouting hikers and hunters. Though the assembly lacks control of the situation, he can see that, after all of the calls Bedelia made this past week, they’ve managed to learn more than most of the public knows about these cases. As the four leading the meeting ask for the assembly’s input, hands shoot up, and while Marigold picks people to speak, Bedelia stands up front uncomfortably, looking to him every so often, wishing to be anywhere else. They both know that this meeting could go awry so quickly. Though for now the only people speaking up are wolves who volunteer to go into the mountains in a pack and attempt mediation, he can hear whispers in the crowd, problems with each idea. If the wolves go and fail, then what comes next? The clearest belief of the assembly is that this land is one of freedom, one not governed by formal treaties or blood pacts but by groups banding together to create good lives for their members; though wars could be waged in order to determine land rights and trade eligibility, no one wants to go to war. However, the lack of attribution for the land means that they can’t rightfully push this vampire out. Though they can ask him to leave, they cannot force him to leave on grounds of trespassing. He must, in the end, leave of his own volition.

So far, the assembly has added one more idea on which they will vote: a daemon or group of daemons could attempt some kind of reconciliation or living invitation. By welcoming this vampire to the land, the killings could end or at least become more discreet. Though Hannibal knows such an idea is doomed - a vampire this careless will hardly listen to a group of daemons talking about philosophy and the wonders of being part of a community - he doesn’t speak up out of fear of exposing himself, and maybe, in the end, such a thing could work, the idea of a community, of being watched, making the vampire reconsider this place and then leave altogether. 

Then, one of the witches sharing his bench raises her hand, and he knows that the worst is about to come.

“I think it might be a good idea if Bedelia’s boyfriend were to have a chat with him,” she says, glancing at Hannibal momentarily, “vampire to vampire.”

* * *

The assembly voted unanimously: Hannibal would be the one to find this vampire and use whatever means necessary in order to stop the killings. While Bedelia stood at the front of the room and tried to control her reaction, she watched as all of the hands - except Hannibal’s, given that he was exempt from the vote - raised with ease, the answer to their questions coming so easily. If anyone could stop a raging vampire, it was another vampire, and another vampire would be the most likely of anyone to return from the altercation alive. Of course, the logic was sound, but when he offered Bedelia dessert at the end of the meeting, she shook her head in a minute way, her visage blank as she tried to make small talk and seem unaffected. Still, the members of the assembly looked at her differently, especially when Hannibal was alongside her; now, they looked at her with a quiet fear and contempt. While the assembly’s members felt that their lives and livelihoods were greatly threatened by a vampire, Bedelia had a vampire in her home, cooking for her, making love to her, and - in their view, not his or Bedelia’s - controlling her. To them, the live Bedelia and Hannibal lived was a threat.

As he drove home, he wished he knew what she was thinking. Next weekend, he would travel out to the assumed location of this vampire, attempt to convince the vampire to either stop these killings or leave this land, and return home with his findings. In theory, the task would be simple, only a weekend away, but he knew - and because he knew, Bedelia knew too - that such a thing could drag on beyond a weekend, and that the assembly only wanted him to return when progress had been made. Now, he couldn’t return to the life they’d built together unless something drastic occurred. He couldn’t return until the assembly silently permitted him to do so.

Once they arrived at the house, she said she wanted to take a bath in order to wind down, and though he offered to draw the bath for her, she asked him not to, the statement awkward on her lips. Any other time, he would draw her a bath, massage her shoulders, wash her hair, but then, she needed to be alone. Instead, he scrubbed all of the pans he brought to the assembly - against his expectations, his apple crisp taken after the group vote had been a hit - and thought of what he would need to pack for the coming weekend. In bed that night, she said _let me go with you,_ and though he had maintained emotional control throughout the night, he paused for a moment before telling her no, for he felt he might cry.

She only cries when she thinks he’s asleep, and her grief feels private, a pain he can’t possibly understand, so he stays still in bed each time, pretends he can’t hear. And when she asks for him the next morning, when she clings as he makes her breakfast, he lets her into his arms, kisses her forehead, holds her close to him, but she has to come to him first. If she doesn’t come to him, then he won’t comfort her, not in this pain. Had she found someone else, almost anyone else, someone from her mother’s coven or even any of the men they’d met at the assembly, she wouldn’t be feeling this pain, so her tears, he knows, are in certain ways his fault. If he is the cause of her pain, then he knows he can only do so much to relieve it.

And orders keep coming in. She takes down her old, worn cook-pots and chops herbs, but her chopping slows, and she leans her palms against the kitchen counter, half-cut herbs left on the wooden cutting board, her gaze wistful and directionless. Though she tries to occupy her mind, he watches as she’s drawn out of the house and into the fields beyond, climbing mountains to this vampire’s makeshift home, offering blood, offering lives, offering anything for him to leave this territory and never come back. Sometimes, Hannibal catches her sitting up in bed at night, and he has to lean onto his side, show her that he’s awake, in hope that she won’t pack a reckless bag and take her car to the nearest mountain-trail, an impulsive decision, one that could kill her. No, he will be the one to go, and though she’s pleaded with him, her plate full and her mind even more so, begging him with fork and knife still on the table to let her come along, he can’t let her. He can’t let her. For him, this journey will be dangerous, but for her, it would be lethal. If she were to face another vampire, he knows she wouldn’t come out of the skirmish alive, not because she lacks the skill but because she lacks inhumanity. He knows firsthand what his kind are capable of. He knows firsthand what destruction a vampire with no attachments left can do.

On Friday evening, his pack is full, warm clothes folded small though he won’t need them, a sweater she knit to remind him of home, letters in her handwriting as if he’s going to war. He doesn’t need much to survive, lived out of a small suitcase for years before he met her, and now, his leather case is rotting in her basement, and he doesn’t care about it anymore. To hell with the suitcase, he never wants to see it again, and instead, he has this little pack, a comfortable mat to rest on, little bar of soap, extra socks. He pieces through the pack, and in each crevasse, in each pocket, there’s a piece of her, a hat she knit for him, a blanket she stitched, a space for a glass bottle of cow’s blood to be taken from the fridge tomorrow. In everything he’s taking, there’s a piece of her, and he listens as she washes up for bed, hair braided back, nightdress covered by a slouchy sweater, trying to stay warm. If she were the one leaving, her pack would contain provisions he stocked, a drawing of them together instead of a letter, the compass he carried in his poor suitcase even though he knows she can find her way home. It would be easier to leave her, he thinks as she applies cream to her face, if she weren’t inextricably bound to him, and if he weren’t inextricably bound to her.

Normally, they curl up together at night, and they’ll either read or talk, wind down before they snuff out the candles, turn off the lamps, but tonight, the lights are off when she comes to bed, and she nestles silently against him, her arm draped over his chest, her knee bent atop his own. She won’t let go.

“Let me go with you,” she says, an echo of the past week. “I pose no threat to him.”

Oh, but she does, not because of who she is but because of who Hannibal is to her. If she can’t wear her ring to the assembly, then she certainly can’t introduce herself to this vampire as his partner, romantic, business, or otherwise. 

“You can’t,” he says, and though all other times he’s met her with a clear no, this time makes his conviction waver. This time, he wishes he could answer in another way, if not for her then selfishly for himself. Has he gone a day without seeing her since they first met? No, he hasn't, not even a single day.

“I can,” she insists, but it’s futile. If she joins him, then she’ll need food, a way to purify water, warm clothes and protection from violence, so many things he can’t offer her. “I can manage. I can…”

But it’s no use, and at this point, they both understand that it’s no use, and she clings to him as if holding him can undo their reality, as if he’s worth clinging to. Does it hurt her, to hold him like this? Does she feel the weight of his inadequacy? Are they both trying to save something that isn’t worth saving?

This time, he consoles her when she cries, if only in an attempt to console himself, and she tries to hide her face, despicable emotions, she feels like a child, but she wants him to stay. She so greatly wishes he could stay. And she sharpened a stake for him, clever woman, and she wrote him letters, dabbed her perfume atop them. Now, his part of the closet is full of clothes she made for him, and his days are punctuated by her, and he cleans her pots while she works, and she lets him cook for her every single day, lets him make her every single one of her meals, indulges him in the one part of being human that he misses. He doesn’t know how to go on without her. He doesn’t know what he’ll do without her by his side.

“Leave early,” she says through her tears. “I won’t say goodbye.”

At least this promise he can keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've posted [ring inspiration pictures](https://melforbes.tumblr.com/post/619150120693448704/just-posting-a-little-bonus-material-to-one-of-my) on my tumblr because planning fictional nuptials is like super fun


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> throwback to when i was like "next chapter up soon" and it's been like legit a whole season haha lmao whoopsie! but now the fall vibes fit (ish) with the season!!! pumpkin spice bedelia!!!!!!!!!! hell yea!!!!!!!! anyway i have been sitting on this for too long i apologize

She wakes in an empty bed. With the fire out, the radiators left off, she curls in on herself, tries to warm up, the world beyond her covers cold and cruel. He thinks the thick wool blanket she puts on the bed in winter is scratchy, so he tugs their flannel sheets up, refuses to let the wool touch his skin. _But you wear Icelandic sweaters,_ she always tells him, and he counters with _yes, but not while I rest._

By now, he must be parking in a nondescript location, taking out his pack, and starting the long trek up the mountain. He must be looking for a deer, something worth killing, something big enough to savor before his long climb. When he looks into his pack, he’ll find letters from her, such small, girlish things, papers spritzed with her perfume, envelopes filled with pressed flowers. Why had she insisted on giving him letters? He’ll only be gone for the weekend; he doesn’t need her letters. Pulling the blankets up over her head, she feels the cold ring brush her cheek, and she winces. What has he turned her into? What, in turn, has she made him?

If she cries, she knows she’ll only feel colder and more upset, so she takes a deep breath, forces herself out of bed. Outside, the day looks overcast, frigid in October, and she shivers as she pulls off her nightdress, as she looks through her closet for proper clothes for the day. A thick cotton dress, a warm raglan sweater over top, she finds long underwear in her drawers and layers one pair of socks over another, hoping her toes will start to warm up. When she tries to light a fire in the fireplace, the kindling refuses to catch, so she curses while the cats fuss around her, mewling and wondering why their breakfast is late; finally, the fire catches, so she can feed the cats while waiting for the house to warm up. By the time the fire starts roaring, Morgana is nudging at Bedelia’s ankles, insistent, and though Bedelia sighs and tells her _you’ve already had your breakfast,_ the cat won’t let up, keeps pushing Bedelia until finally Bedelia is standing in the doorway of the kitchen, the brightest room in the house, a place that would otherwise be warm and full of good smells as her almost-husband cooks her breakfast. Morgana is telling her to eat.

When was the last time Bedelia cooked for herself? Though she made jam with Hannibal after they harvested the last of the raspberries, she hasn’t made a meal for herself since he started living in her home. No, he makes all of her meals, and he loves cooking, tells her how much he’s missed being able to cook, and though he can’t eat any of what he prepares, he tells her that he doesn’t care, for giving her something warm and delicious to eat is far more satisfying than eating the meal himself. He wants her to sit in the main room and read while he slaves over dinner. He wants to light candles on the dinner table on a Tuesday night, just to make the evening feel special. And she can picture it all so easily, French toast with lots of powdered sugar for breakfast, seared steak for dinner, fresh pomegranate seeds in a neat little bowl, and she wants to tell the whole assembly, even the whole world, _this is my life with him. Look, he’s next to me while I eat dinner, and this is so normal for us. When he needs to hunt, I find chantarelles in the woods, and for my dinner, he fries them in duck fat and rosemary. In the summer, he joins me in the garden, and though he sometimes needs to go inside, the sun too harsh on his skin, I always find the house a little bit cleaner on those days, and my dinner a little more elaborate. And here, I’m mending one of his socks, and he’s sketching the anatomy of a human shoulder, sometimes asking me to slip off my sweater and let him feel for each particular muscle. When I’m tired, he reads to me at night until I fall asleep. I pack his rain shell when we go into the woods because I’m better at sensing the weather than he is. He patches up the roof when it leaks because he hears those leaks long before I do. He makes our bed every morning because he insists on keeping everything neat. Sometimes, when I’m nervous about the state of my business, he draws me a bath, then washes my hair and massages my shoulders. Last summer, he hunted alone because I needed to finish custom orders, and when he returned, he brought me a bouquet of wildflowers. Your husbands bring you flowers, don’t they? Don’t they?_

She’s not hungry. The others will never understand, and she’s not hungry, and she’s not sure she’ll be hungry for the rest of the weekend. Does she even know how to cook anymore? Yes, of course she does, but she doesn’t want to cook. No, she doesn’t want to cook, and she doesn’t want to work on the orders she needs to finish, and she doesn’t want to look at her balance sheet, and she doesn’t want to sit in the main room and tend to the fire and draw the cats nearer to her for warmth. Instead, she wants to go with him to tonight’s screening of _The Invisible Man_ at the little local cinema, and she wants to lean her head against his shoulder midway through the film. And she wants to come home with him, stretch out and yawn in bed, curl up against him while outside it starts to rain. In October, she especially loves the rain. Outside, the leaves will fall in the graveyard beyond her house, and when she wakes up in the morning, there will be a thick fog over the town, and best of all, he’ll be in bed alongside her, asking her what she would like for breakfast.

Morgana nudges her again, so she concedes. They must have bread in the kitchen; she’ll make toast, then give the cats most of it. But do they have butter? She opens the refrigerator, then stills, for inside, the shelves are chock-full of baking dishes and dutch ovens, all covered in foil, all labeled with _spinach lasagna_ and _beef stew_ and _chicken soup with rice_ , enough to last beyond the weekend, enough to last her through next week. When did he have time to prepare all of this? There’s so much, and she leans against the fridge as her knees buckle, tries to settle herself down onto the floor in front of the fridge, but she can’t tear her eyes off of the food. All of this food, all prepared for her. Before he left, he made sure that she would be well-fed in his absence. Did he know she would hesitate before eating breakfast with him gone? She wishes she could speak to him. She wishes she could write him a letter now, thanking him for preparing so much for her. 

_But he has your letters,_ she thinks, and she covers her face with her hands and starts to cry in front of the open fridge, and the whole house is cold, cold, cold.

* * *

Though she knew she ought to stay home and wait, finish off the orders before they were to be picked up on Tuesday, and though she figured she should send a note before her arrival as to be a proper guest, she packed her car anyway, the spinach lasagna and a tray of raspberry bars left in the trunk along with her own pack. _I can go away for one night,_ she told herself as she latched the trunk, as she thought through the whole route. _He made me a week’s worth of food. I can go away for one night._

And the drive north is was rural as she remembered it being, the long, winding roads tiring her as she shifted gears. At home, she left an enchantment on the cats’ dishes, so they would be alright without her. How strange, she thought as she drove, that no one would miss her in the meantime. No, that wasn’t right, Hannibal would miss her, but he wasn’t near her anymore, so did it matter that he missed her? Yes, of course it mattered, but she drove on as if it didn’t. 

Now, she parks at the locked gate, pulls her pack and the two trays from the car, starts the hike to the cabin. Are they even home? Yes, they must be home, where else would they be? Pressing on up the steep, rocky road, she pants with the effort, cold weather clothes in her pack, awkward trays held against her chest. Though she scoffed at learning about brooms when she was a teenager - in her defense, cars were, in fact, more practical, and so many fictitious comets that supposedly came once every seventy years had been created because witches were negligent when it came to flying, and, well, her father had given her keys to his Mercedes - times like this make her wonder why, _why_ hadn’t she let her aunts teach her how to fly? Then, she remembers a simple spell, _thank goodness,_ and now, the two trays hover alongside her as she walks; though the effort of the spell is also tiring, at least her hands are free.

Finally, she reaches the top of the hill, and there, right above the big bowl of the lake, is her aunts’ little cabin, smaller than her college apartment, no plumbing or electricity, the chimney warm with smoke. Yes, they’re home, and as Bedelia reaches the door, she can already picture how it looks inside: floral mugs on the generations-old kitchen table, wood in the stove, the bunks at the edge of the room filled with either sleeping bags of haphazard supplies, the door across from the entrance leading out to the beautiful porch overlooking the lake. As a child, she spent so many summers here, her sleeping bag taking the bottom bunk in the main room at first and then gradually moving to the top one, and though Bedelia’s parents begrudgingly brought her up north, not approving of the aunts for many reasons, Bedelia could only think of Aunt Celeste and her partner, Penny, with fondness, for they’d taught Bedelia everything she knew of witchcraft, from basic healing brews to flirtation spells to drastic, life-altering potions. Despite their disapproval when Bedelia decided to pursue university education, the aunts at least, unlike Bedelia’s parents, still wrote kind letters to her, even came to her graduation and did their best not to stick out among all of the humans. Over the years, Bedelia lost contact with Celeste and Penny, but she could always remember their clear, kind words: _if you’re ever lost, come look for us._

She holds her breath as she stands in front of the cabin’s door. By now, the aunts must know that someone’s here, can likely tell that it’s her, but still, she takes a moment and wonders if she ought to turn around. _They might be angry with you,_ she tells herself. _The council may have informed them of your transgressions. And even if they don’t know, they’ll ask about the ring, and you know you can’t lie to them. You know you can’t._

But she forces herself to knock anyway, and then, Aunt Penny is at the door, and she’s older now, her endless braid grey to her shoulders and then light blonde the rest of the way down, her crow’s feet deeper, her brown eyes somehow even warmer. And she smiles at Bedelia, looks her up and down, reaches out for the floating dishes.

“Celeste!” Penny calls out into the cabin, and given how tiny the place is, Aunt Celeste can’t be far away. “Bramble’s here!”

* * *

With the lasagna heating up in the wood-fired oven, the cabin grows so warm that Bedelia wonders if she should take off her sweater. The little kitchen is tucked to the rightmost side of the cabin, the ancient kitchen table with four chairs - though only two are typically used - nudged up alongside the kitchen; the door to the bedroom is on the leftmost side of the cabin, with a big bookshelf to the door’s left and the built-in bunks to the right. In the middle of the main room, there are two armchairs and an old couch covered with a sheet in order to keep off cat hair. Their two cats, the elderly-when-Bedelia-last-saw-her gray tabby named Maudie and a Siamese named Mitzi, stare up at Bedelia while she sits in one of the armchairs, the aunts sharing the couch. When Mitzi jumps up onto Bedelia’s lap, Bedelia misses the question Aunt Celeste is asking.

“Sorry,” Bedelia says, glancing up at her aunt and then back down at little Mitzi, so soft and warm in her lap. “Would you mind repeating what you said?”

Aunt Celeste softens, the gruff old woman. With thin, severe eyebrows and a temperament that can be sensed from miles away, Aunt Celeste always was less agreeable than Bedelia’s mother, her sister. While Bedelia’s mother tried her best to deny her ancestry, married a human man against the coven’s wishes and spent years avoiding the craft, Celeste so clearly is a witch, her bright blue eyes sparkling with an otherworldly mischief, her long dresses and bony fingers covered in rings that make her stand out. And though Bedelia knows that Aunt Celeste appears so gruff and angry to others, Aunt Celeste had been the one to find Bedelia playing in the bushes near the cabin, smile, and give her the nickname Bramble.

“I was wondering if you were the witch who set that man on fire,” Celeste says, half-disapprovingly, for she’d been the one to teach Bedelia about such a potion. “You caused a bit of a fuss among our kind.”

The northeastern witches tend to hear gossip months after such things have occurred, and in such fragmented ways that the information becomes jumbled and inaccurate. Bedelia wonders if someday these witches will discover telephones.

“Care to elaborate?” Bedelia asks, stroking Mitzi on her lap.

“There was a mayor,” Celeste says. “He caught fire.”

Well, this bit managed to stay intact.

“He was a pedophile,” Bedelia says, tone indicating that she does not wish to elaborate.

“And the bears,” Penny says, nodding alongside Celeste on the couch. “Did you set those bears loose?”

“No,” Bedelia says, then wonders, _what bears?_

“I didn’t think so,” Penny says, “but _someone,_ ” she nudges Celeste, “wasn’t so sure.”

“I just thought-”

But then, Penny springs up and heads over to Bedelia, her little shearling slippers tip-tapping along the old wooden floors of the cabin, and Penny crouches - _her knees,_ Bedelia thinks - alongside Bedelia’s chair, reaches up for Bedelia’s hand. On Bedelia’s lap, Mitzi mewls in protest, wanting to be stroked again, but Penny holds up Bedelia’s hand, the ring - _damn this ring_ \- sparkling in the process. 

“Oh, darling,” Penny says in a cracking, maternal voice that makes Bedelia’s heart pound. She lets go of Bedelia’s hand and wraps her arms around Bedelia, Mitzi jumping off of Bedelia’s lap and mewling with annoyance. “Did you come to tell us that you’re getting married?”

And the explanation is painfully awkward, and Penny begs for a picture, and as Bedelia reaches into her pack, now left on the bottom bunk, she finds herself smiling. While packing for this trip, she put one of her favorite pictures into her pack not because she wanted to show her aunts but because she didn’t want to go a day without seeing his face; when they went to the opera in Boston in the spring, Hannibal offered to take a picture for a posing young couple who then took a picture for them in return, and she and Hannibal stand in the beautiful, historic theatre, him in one of his lighter suits and her in a drapey, pale blue dress, the hem reaching her ankles, a plunging neckline and long, puffy sleeves. In the picture, his arm is around her back, and her palm is resting on his chest, and they look simultaneously old-fashioned and modern, classic and ineffable. That night, she felt beautiful already, but when he looked at her, really looked, she felt the most beautiful she thought she could ever feel.

The aunts pass the picture back and forth and smile, carry on, and Bedelia takes deep breaths, tries not to cry. What use is there in crying? But they like him, oh, they _like_ him, and deep down, she needs them to like him, for she can’t imagine her life without him. Though part of her scoffs, _desperate girl,_ another part tells her that loving is valiant, that her life is better with him in it not because he wants to marry her but because he is exactly who he is. Her life is better because he loves cooking for her. Though she could work on her own, could sew and knit and garden without him easily, the fresh vegetables from their garden become even more special when he’s inspired to cook with them, and each time she checks the measurements she took of him for knitwear, she knows that having someone to knit for, someone to love, makes that knitting all the more enjoyable. 

Of course, the aunts ask the basic questions. _How did you meet? What’s he like? Does he treat you well? When did he ask?_ But Celeste furrows her brow down at the picture while Penny gushes about the ring, and when Celeste meets Bedelia’s gaze, Bedelia’s heart pounds. She can predict the next question.

“Which coven does he belong to?” Celeste asks, but she already knows that Hannibal isn’t a member of a coven. She already knows that something isn’t quite right.

Though Bedelia opens her mouth to speak, she pauses, tries to elongate the moment. Right now, her aunts are happy with her. Her aunts think this fiancé of hers is cute, and they like that he cooks for her, that he helps with her business whenever he can, that he gardens with her and smiles when he puts on the sweaters she’s made him. Right now, her marriage to him feels so normal, so expected, so proper. Of course she said yes when he asked, and of course he found the perfect ring for her, one she loves wearing, one she hates having to take off. Right now, her future with him is full of love, and it would be acceptable to ask her aunts if she and Hannibal can conceive, as if they might have the answer for which she’s searched in every book she owns. Right now, she’s a girl engaged to the love of her life, and everything is okay.

But she knows better than to think that such happiness can last, so she tells her aunts the truth and this time tries not to cry in despair.

* * *

As Bedelia takes her sleeping mat and blankets from her pack, sets up her bunk for the night, the aunts are brushing their teeth on the back porch, light rain starting to fall over the lake. No indoor plumbing, she remembers the summers during which she would dangle her legs over the ledge of the back porch while rain poured at night, trying - and oftentimes failing - to piss on the ground below, the cold, damp walk to the outhouse seeming miles long in such weather. Thankfully, she remembered her rain shell, and tonight, her thick socks and warm sweater will keep her warm, but still, the thought of stepping out onto the cold porch and then spitting over the edge after brushing her teeth makes her wince. She wishes she could curl up and never feel cold again.

When the aunts come back inside, they smile at her softly, hug her goodnight, wish her sweet dreams and tell her to ask if she needs anything, as if she were still a child. Yes, this is the same as her summers here as a child, except this time she’s an adult and too cold, and the aunts look at her with a quiet kind of fear. Back then, her decisions were childish and naive, improper spells only ever burning the tips of the cats’ tails or turning a salt shaker into a rat, but now, she can hurt others with her actions. She can hurt her aunts with her actions. Does she really have power, if using that power will always hurt someone? Or is she a different kind of powerless, a kind that comes from having options but being paralyzed by choice?

It’s humbling, then, that she has a single tiny bunk in which she will sleep tonight. She almost wishes she could take a pup tent outside and stay there, the tarp overhead pooling with rain. Though her life feels overwhelming, she nonetheless can fit it all in this tiny bunk, her pack left on the floor alongside it, her head on a thin pillow. Tonight, she can sleep safe and sound in this tiny spot, and there’s no room for excess, no room for unnecessary thought. 

But she can hear her aunts through the cabin’s thin walls. She forgot about this part. During those childhood summers, she heard plenty; she learned that her existence was controversial within her mother’s side of the family, the lineage saved but the corruption obvious, and she learned that maybe she should be ashamed of her capabilities. When she returned home at the end of the summer, she went back to school with a guarded heart, not wanting to harm her classmates, wishing she could truly fit in, but she would never fit in, not in the way she wished to. Instead, there was something wrong with her, and her classmates knew it. Her classmates knew that part of Bedelia was corrupt, and though they couldn’t say exactly which part, they still looked at her with disdain, as if she carried a communicable disease. Once, she thought of talking to her mother about being a witch, but her mother always shirked that topic, so Bedelia held the shame, struggled to let it go.

And in the end, she pleased no one. When she received her degrees, she was congratulated only out of social courtesy. She bought her home and moved in without help, for no one thought that she should live so far from a coven she’d started to hate. To the rest of her family, her business was a joke, and her only mildly enchanted garden made other witches scoff. _Why do you bother washing dishes?_ a fellow witch would ask, but Bedelia knew that they would never understand the sacredness of a routine, how comfortable it felt to soak a sweater in lanolin soap and then hang to dry. Though magic helped her in so many ways, she still liked certain parts of being human, the tenderness and vulnerability, the meditative quiet as she put more logs into the fireplace in the winter. She wished for years that she could meet someone who understood.

Of course, her wish came true in a way that meant she would only be filled with greater sorrow. No, what a melodramatic thing to think, but she can hear her aunts talking, and she wonders if she ought to despair.

“It’s just a fling, Celeste,” Penny defends, voice quiet. Maybe they know that Bedelia can hear them through the walls. “In a couple of months, she’ll talk about some bad breakup, and she’ll have forgotten this creature by her birthday.”

For once, Bedelia finds the wool blanket she holds over top of her long underwear itchy.

“Or,” Celeste counters, and Bedelia hears one side of their bed creak with added weight, “she’ll be dead before the Solstice, and no one will find her body until next summer.”

“Would there even be a body left?” Penny huffs. “All those cats.”

The cabin is dark, and Bedelia doesn’t want to hear any more of this. She wants to sleep, and in a tiny bunk in which he would never fit alongside her. She wants them to be quiet.

“I’m scared for her,” Celeste says, uncomfortably serious. “I know you think I shouldn’t be, but I am.”

“Oh, darling.”

“He may love her, but he’ll only ever hurt her,” Celeste says. “And...I can’t believe she asked.”

Penny sighs, says, “It was a worthwhile question.”

“Worthwhile?” Celeste says, aghast. “A _worthwhile_ question would be one about whether or not interspecies relationships last. The question of whether or not she can conceive this creature’s child...it’s absurd, Penny. You must see that.”

“She’s in love,” Penny defends. “She’s not thinking.”

But she _is_ thinking, and she knows she is. She _knows_ that they have a good life together. And years ago, she left her coven for such a similar reason, the witches not understanding why she would wash dishes or attend university or try to start a business. Back then, rejection hurt, and she still feels the sting of how neither of her parents accepted her up until the days they died, but at least her efforts had felt admirable despite the rejection. A diploma and a successful business were socially acceptable accomplishments, so even though her coven didn’t understand her accomplishments, these were accomplishments nonetheless. But with Hannibal, the witches reject her because they see her love as deviant, as harmful to the whole community, as aimless and stupid and naive, and though she wants to counter, though she knows she loves her life with him, she still wonders, _am I rejecting them simply because of a man? Or is this really, truly what I want?_

Her toes are cold; she’ll need to layer on another pair of socks. Because she can’t sit up in the bunk, she reaches down awkwardly and fishes through her pack, then hisses with pain as she comes away with a paper cut. Sucking the wound, she glances down at what gave her the cut, and it’s not the picture of him she brought but a folded piece of paper, one she can’t recall packing. She picks up the paper and unfolds it, whispers a few words and waits while the words in his handwriting illuminate on the page, glowing before her.

_ I’ve left this in your pack in case you decide to follow me. Hopefully, this letter will keep you safe. _

She closes her eyes momentarily, for he knows her so well, so painfully well. And she wanted to follow him, she wanted so badly to follow him, but she knew that following him would be naive and perhaps fatal. She stayed behind not because she wanted to but because she knew leaving might mean she would never return home again.

_ These times have reminded me that the life we share is so small. Though my life feels endless when shared with you, I’ve forgotten that the rest of the world lives differently from the way we do, and I wish that remembrance hadn’t come as a shock. In the past week, I’ve thought through every part of our year together, and I keep searching for some sign that we’re the dreadful beings that the witches and daemons and wolves believe us to be, but, Bedelia, I cannot find a sign. Though I thought that I would feel reassured by this, instead I feel hollow. I wish I could see us the way that they see us, if only so that I could refute their arguments, but I can’t see us that way. Where they see pain and depravity, I see you dressed for the ballet last winter, how beautiful you looked. Where they see deviance and naivety, I see something for which I’ve searched my entire life. I’ve looked for you for so many years, Bedelia, and now that I’ve found you, I can’t bear to lose you because of the opinions of those who will never understand. _

_ I wish that I could be a proper partner for you, one whose introductions would never be so drastic and controversial. If you would like for me to leave your home and never return, I understand. But know that I am waging war with my kind because I want this life we’ve crafted together. I am not traveling in order to help the council; I am traveling because I never want you to live in fear. Most often, I feel that you are a protector of mine, someone who saved me from an aimless existence and gave me life, but now, it is my turn to be your protector. I will work to understand this vampire, try to appeal to his remaining humanity, and should that fail, I will kill him. I will drive your stake through his heart, and to the council, he will die for the sake of the beings of this land, but to me, he will die so that you can feel safe again. You have given me a beautiful life and a love unlike any I have ever experienced, and it feels right, then, that I should give you a sense of safety. I know you would - or someday will - do the same for me. _

_ Please don’t follow me. I will return to you when our world is safe again. I promise that I will return. Until then, know that I am thinking of you fondly, remembering our year together and knowing with conviction that the accusations against us are so far from the truth. _

Beneath the scratchy wool blanket, she clutches the letter to her chest, the aunts quieting, the cabin so dark around Bedelia. Somewhere far away, Hannibal is resting tonight, and though she’ll never know for certain, she thinks he must feel the way she does now, melancholic and nostalgic, wishing for what they can’t have. _I promise that I will return,_ she imagines him saying as she closes her eyes. And when he returns, she will be at home waiting for him, and she will hold him until they both understand the truth: their life together is finally safe again.

* * *

For breakfast, the aunts make cinnamon pancakes, the griddle sprawling over top of the woodstove, the fire heating the cabin and the meal all at once. Aunt Celeste refuses to let anyone else take the spatula, so she’s the one to flip the pancakes while Penny cuts up apples, puts the slices into a bowl. Though Maudie prefers the warm, quiet spots in the room, Mitzi puts her paws up on Bedelia’s chair at the kitchen table, then mewls until Bedelia picks her up, holds her as if the cat were a baby. Though the day is overcast, rain on the horizon, at least the cabin is starting to warm up; today, Bedelia only needs to wear one pair of socks, not two.

“Tell me,” Celeste says as she brings two plates of pancakes to the table, always serving herself last, “when will we see you again, Bramble?”

And because Bedelia heard so much of their conversation, she knows what her aunt isn’t asking: _when can we see you alive again?_ So she makes up something about Yule, maybe coming to see them then, the coven festivities last year were bland as could be, some real celebration would be wonderful. And she peppers in that maybe she’ll bring her husband, just to make the aunts nervous, then picks up her fork and knife, cuts through her pancakes. Oh, fresh maple syrup, boiled by a neighbor, her aunts always made the best breakfasts, her summers at this cabin spent eating so well and going home plumper than before. As she brings another bite to her mouth, she realizes that the only times in her life that she’s eaten breakfast have been when she stayed at her aunts’ cabin or after Hannibal came to live with her, her university life spent eating only lunch and dinner, her parents scoffing at meals before noon, her quiet home seeming indifferent to a fresh start in the morning. She’s only ever had breakfasts cooked by someone who loves her.

Of course, the aunts insist on sending her home with food, squashes from their garden, apples from local orchards, her bag overflowing with produce. They spun local wool, so tweedy, but the yarn is thinner than they’d like, would she mind taking it off of their hands? And away she goes, hiking back to her car, the air around her thick with humidity, rain imminent. She ought to drive home before darkness falls, and darkness keeps falling earlier and earlier nowadays. Though sometimes it’s finicky in cooler weather, the car starts with ease, and she drives twenty miles before she finds a radio station, ten more before she’s on pavement, and even ten more before she finds gasoline. With a full tank, she eats an apple as she drives, classical music and commentary on the radio, her window rolled a bit down to keep the air inside fresh. She hates highways. She hates cars that drive too fast, and people who throw trash from car windows. But at least the leaves on the trees that border the highway are at peak, warm colors on a misty day, the weather softening as she travels back over the Massachusetts border. If she’s lucky, maybe she’ll see sun today.

When she parks in front of her home, he hasn’t returned, and she never expected him to. She unlocks the front door, pushing the cats out of the way, then heads into the kitchen, lets down her many fruits and vegetables from her aunts, leaving the yarn from her aunts in her upstairs office so that the cats won’t play with it. Though now is late for lunch, she heads back downstairs and opens the fridge anyway. What should she have? Chicken soup with rice, yes, that would be lovely; she puts a pot on the stove, uses a match to light the burner, then pours the soup he made into the pot. Oh, he used fresh herbs, thyme and rosemary, she’s in for a treat, and though she cherishes the note he wrote her, kept it in the pocket of her dress all day, this soup feels like a love note too, the time he took to chop vegetables for her, the effort of mincing herbs, the sizzling olive oil and the mirepoix and the long-grain rice he so carefully cooked, these are testaments to his love for her. And she wonders if he feels that same love where he is now, if he’s wearing one of the sweaters she knit for him, if he’s begrudging the stale blood she forced him to pack just in case. She’s tired of measuring her life through calculatedly conventional means. Yes, her business is successful, and yes, she has her degrees framed on her wall, and yes, she’s going to marry, but those things feel irrelevant to her life. No, the most relevant thing to her life is this chicken soup being ladled into a ceramic bowl made by one of the other witches who sells at the summer market, or the fire she started in the main room without having to use a match or carry in wood, or the to-do list she keeps in her notebook, all of her orders for the week and when they’re due, a rough list of ingredients so that she knows what to bring up from the basement. Her life is the way he makes their bed in the morning, and the way she holds her pen as she writes. Her life is laughing over dinner in a way that makes the candlelight flicker around her and her lover. Her life is love, in so many forms.

And once her lunch is over, she’ll enchant the dishes so that she can start on her to-do list sooner. She needs to finish her orders for this week. Later, if she has time, she’ll pick up her knitting needles and cast on socks using that new yarn from her aunts, and she’ll agonize over every stitch even though she could suspend the needles in the air and make them do the work for her. Or maybe she’ll read instead, stick with an activity that magic only makes less convenient, and when she grows hungry, she’ll heat more soup, or the eggplant parmesan he made, or the beef stew, and she’ll put the kettle on for some tea as well, herbs as medicine, the darkness of autumn welcome in her home. And she’ll miss him the whole time, of course she’ll miss him, but she’s so lucky to have someone to miss. They’ve spent their whole lives missing each other, so how could they complain about one little week?

But she still looks out the window as she works. She still hopes he’ll come home soon.


End file.
